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I received a message from my sister the other day, it was a link to a video claiming to be a real heartwarming story about a cow rescued from the meat industry. My first thought was “Oh my gosh, what happened? That is awful!” Any animal having to be rescued brings me to tears. So I watched this video prepared to cry and be outraged at the awful human that could do something bad to an animal. Well I was outraged, at the people who produced the video! What a bunch of crap!!

If you were to take the audio and written speech off, then the video is of a cow who does not look injured or malnourished and when approached by the camera man “moos”. Then it shows her standing in a pen with a full udder “mooing”. A trailer pulls up and they have a calf on a harness and try to lead it to the pen. It flops to the ground, they pull it up and get it through the gate where it flops again. The final shot is of the calf drinking from the cow.

So without all the audio and speech, and with first hand knowledge of how a cow reacts when she has lost her calf, and I mean lost like she can’t find it, my impression of this video is that they have moved this cow and are just bringing the calf to her. No big deal. The mom doesn’t look stressed like she is missing the baby, she is not pacing the fence like an anxious mom would. She doesn’t have that “look” in her eye like the look even a human mother gets when she can’t find her child. The calf looks healthy and when it flops on the ground, I kind of chuckle because it is being like a typical…well anything, that doesn’t want to go where they are being made to go. My daughters cat will throw herself on the ground repeatedly when she has her harness on like we are shooting her or something. It is actually quite funny and dramatic looking.

Ky, the drama queen when wearing a harness.

My point is that once they add the sad music, the commentary is that this cow’s baby was taken from her, how she cries for it and how sad that is, how starving the calf is and it collapses from stress and exhaustion, they completely lead people astray from the truth.

Yes, cows do bawl (moo) for their calves, all the time. Even when they are right in front of them. They also bawl when they see the feed wagon coming, or just because that is how cows communicate.

In Canada we have an ad on tv for the visually impaired and why there is descriptive tv. It shows us a blurry picture and we hear the sounds of what is happening. Based on those sounds we develop a perception of what we believe to be happening. This is based on our experiences in life which means that each of us could come to a different conclusion about what we are seeing. Then as the picture becomes clearer, we see what is actually happening and it turns out that it does not match what we had assumed. That is the exact premise that these people putting the video out are counting on, that we will assume things based on what they choose to show and tell us. They don’t give us the whole picture.

I am seeing this more all the time and it is very frustrating. For instance, A&W saying that their chicken is raised without hormones. That wording makes you assume that other chicken is raised with hormones right? Well fact is, no chicken contains hormones. That is the law in Canada. How do I know? I researched it. I was led to assume what they wanted me to, but I wanted to know the truth so I looked it up.

With this amazing connection to everything in the world, do yourself a favor and educate yourself before you assume things. Pass on the “truths”, don’t be so quick to hit “share” unless you know it is true because then you are just helping spread the lies. Everyone is free to have “opinions” but that is different than expressing a false fact that people will then believe.

Has anyone else came across something that made them say “That is just so NOT true!” Educate us, please. 🙂